


for dramatic purposes

by swingingparty



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fix-It, Found Families, Gen, Homeless Peter Parker, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hurt/Comfort, Hydra (Marvel), Identity Reveal, Inaccurate depictions of MacDonald’s employment, Irondad, Ned Leeds is a Good Bro, Peter Parker Has Issues, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Protective Tony Stark, Secret Identity, Sort Of, Spider-Man: Homecoming Compliant, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark is Nosy, author is taking creative liberties
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-07-19 21:16:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19980631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swingingparty/pseuds/swingingparty
Summary: Peter Parker is trying to survive. Tony Stark is trying to move on. Neither of them have any reason to believe they should cross paths trying to do those things.But then they do. And the bombs start going off, and Peter, under the guise of Spider-man, finally gets Tiny to crack and let him help find out who's behind it. He has one rule, though and, hey, Tony can do one rule, right? Even if the rule is that he’s not allowed to figure out that Spider-man is Peter, no matter what.Right?





	1. Chapter 1

“...and listen, dude, _stop_ trying to rob old ladies’ cars, okay? It’s really not a hard thing to, like, not do, you know. If this is ‘cause you’re _bored_ , or whatever, and you need a hobby, just let me know! There’s this sick bingo alley on the corner of 167th and Highland which is supposed to be _super fun_ , really welcoming to new people -”

“Do you ever shut the fuck up, man?”

Peter Parker rocks back on his heels a little at that. He’s squatting down next old-ladies’-car-robber in question, his forearms resting on his knees and his hands methodically clenching and unclenching in front of him. The red of his suit is glowing almost fluorescent in the light of the streetlamp above them and the whole alleyway which they’ve found themselves in smells vaguely like undercooked hot dogs and burning rubber. Bad combination.

In front of him sits - half-sits, half-lays, really - the car robber. This marks the third time Peter’s seen him in the frame of time he usually allocates to a month - without a calendar or a reliable system telling him what the day is, it’s hard to be certain - and he’s finally lost his patience a little. The first time, he let the guy - who’s name he _thinks_ named Mark but could very well be Alexander, too - off with just a warning. Stupid decision, apparently, but Mark-Alexander had looked hungry and tired, and less well-checked parts of Peter had felt a wash of bitter sympathy so strong it nearly knocked him off his feet. It had made sense to let him go - he really couldn’t just web the guy up and leave him to starve, could he?

 _(And if he_ did _, what would that mean he had to do to himself, sometimes?)_

So he let Mark-Alexander off. And then the second time, the guy got away before Peter could catch him. That was lame, considering Peter was supposed to be, like, _good_ at catching criminals, but that day had left _him_ feeling beyond hungry and tired. All he hand really wanted to do at the time of Encounter Number Two was just curl up and sleep for six years, not run down back alleys chasing one random carjacker, so he had let the guy run off.

And now here they are. Time number three. Peter’s still pretty hungry and tired and, judging by the looks of his gaunt face and dark shadows illuminating his cheekbones, so is Mark-Alexander and the mix of anger and sympathy Peter feels towards himself and Mark-Alexander respectively is still strong enough to knock him off his feet, but he’s really sick of chasing this guy down, so he finally caved and webbed him to a nearby lamppost.

Peter feels bad as Mark-Alexander gives him a glare that’s equal parts anger, resentment, and fear. He hates when people look at him like they’re afraid of him. Hates it beyond the ability to explain it - or the _want_ to explain it, really. Peter knows why he hates getting looks like that - like he’s about to beat the criminal in question within an inch of their lives or kill them or do something else unspeakable and horrific - but the explanation falls comfortably within the sections of Peter’s mind that he’s marked off with bright yellow caution tape and refused to venture into at any cost. There’s stuff in there that he just can’t deal with - not now, hopefully not ever. That’s just how it is.

So, anyways, back to Mark-Alexander.

Peter sighs a little, letting his shoulders relax and his hands move forward so that his fingers are dragging across the concrete. He picks at a tuft of grass growing up from one of the cracks in the sidewalk, thinking about his next words a little more than he usually does.

“Man, okay, look,” he finally says, staring carefully at Mark-Alexander’s left boot. “I totally get it, you know, you’re in a tough spot, these old ladies are rich as hell- really, I understand.”

Because he does, he does so much and that’s another thing he hates beyond the ability to explain it.

“But, listen, if it’s not me stopping you, it’s just gonna be the cops, and they’re not gonna lose any sleep over tossing you in jail for a month, okay?”

Mark-Alexander gives a heavy snort. His head is lolling forward, body only kept up by the sheer amount of webs that are holding him to the lamppost - seriously, Peter’s _got_ to cut back on his usage of the webs; it’s not like they grow on trees, or anything - and he looks so, so exhausted.

 _Join the club_ , something inside Peter snarls with not a little bitterness. He shoves the thought down. Now _that’s_ a supremely unhelpful way of thinking.

“And, what?” Mark-Alexander says in the same bored, tired voice as before. “You will?”

He will, but that’s probably not a great piece of information to give to criminals. “Don’t matter, dude. Point is, if you’re in a tough spot, or whatever, and you need stuff - food, money, shelter, water, whatever - there are places you can go, you know? Shelters, stores - there’s a really nice place like, a block from here; lady who runs it is super nice, doesn’t give a shit if you have a criminal record, or whatever. She can help. Tons of other people like her can, too, you know? Just - robbing people’s cars isn’t the way to go, man. You can ask for help, you know?”

It’s times like these that Peter’s expressly grateful he doesn’t have anyone like him in his life because he’d have punched them in the face at least sixty times by now. He knows how obnoxious what he’s saying is - he’s heard it a billion times in a billion different variations and each time made him want to strangle the person saying it - but right now, he’s not Peter Parker. He’s not a however-many-year-old - he’s guessing fifteen-and-a-half, sixteen - kid from Queens who hasn’t officially had a place of residence in almost two years right now; he’s not the person who would probably end up in the same position as Mark-Alexander is in right now if Spider-man was anyone but him. He doesn’t get annoyed with himself telling people to _get help_ , or whatever because, right now, _he’s not Peter Parker._ He’s Spider-man, local vigilante in a sweatsuit and super creepy looking goggles - as everyone _loves_ pointing out to him - and Spider-man does the right thing. Or, at least he _says_ what the right thing is in the form of overused, obnoxious spiels to half-criminals taped to lamp posts.

 _You can ask for help_ , god. As _if_.

Mark-Alexander seems to be sharing some of Peter’s internal dislike for his little tirade back there. He doesn’t acknowledge anything Peter says, simply giving him a long, sullen glare before sighing again. “How long until this shit comes off?” he asks, jerking his head awkwardly downwards. “I got places to be.”

“More cars to break into?”

“Fuck off, kid. How long?”

Peter tries very hard not to bristle at the moniker of _kid_. He knows he sounds a bit on the young side - his voice _has_ broken, he’s pretty sure, but it still makes him sound like a thirteen-year-old - and the fact that he’s five-foot-eight on a good day doesn’t help his case much, either, but getting angry at being called _kid_ will only make it seem more like he _is_ an actual kid, which under no circumstances can happen.

Because no one cares that Peter Parker is a kid. That’s how things are. But people will start caring if they figure out Spider-man is, too, because who wants a sixteen year old kid running around jumping off buildings and fighting bad guys? That sounds like the type of thing that would make even the most emotionally removed New Yorker cock an eyebrow. And eyebrow cocking leads to questions which leads to people getting involved and that sounds like it could lead to a lot of complications that make Peter feel very sick and very stressed out, so he doesn’t think about them much. Point is, he’s safe as long as no one notices anything, basically. No one will question Spider-man if he doesn’t give them a reason to, and sometimes that involves being an annoying goody-two-shoes and putting up with all sorts of uncomfortable diminutive terms.

“Eh, two hours,” he says aloud, standing up, his muscles only protesting a little at the change in position. “Give or take.”

“Give or take _what?”_ Mark-Alexander demands, struggling a little as Peter walks away backward.

“A few hours!” he calls back. “Sorry, Mark-Alexander!”

“My name is Aaron, weirdass!”

“Sorry, Aaron!”

And with that, he’s off, jumping up into the air and spinning around mid-leap to shoot a web, attaching himself to the corner of the nearest building. He pulls himself upwards and fires another, this one on the middle of a window of an apartment complex, flying through the air for a few seconds. From there, the rest is muscle memory. Fire, pull, fly. Fire, pull, fly. 

This is arguably his favorite and least favorite part of the day. Traveling by webs beats everything from walking to running to anything, really. Hitchhiking, especially, but that’s a thing that’s in the cautioned-off part of his mind, so he forcefully shoves it back in there. Web-slinging. It’s fun. Exhilarating. As a kid, he had the perfect combination of zero fear of heights and the love for moving as fast as humanly possible, which makes web-slinging now completing at least six of his childhood dreams. And it really _is_ fun; both sixteen-year-old and eight-year-old Peter Parker can agree on that. The streets are mostly deserted now - it’s dark; probably verging on midnight - but on the rare occasions when he does head back before the sun’s set, there’s always gaggles of admiring people below him, watching him as he flies through the air, cheering when he does an obligatory flip or flashes them a peace sign before rounding a corner. And _that’s_ nice too, the attention, even if it kills him to admit it. Sure, he’s self-sustainable and independent and doesn’t need anyone and all that crap, but it is nice to have people look at him with nothing but admiration. People like Spider-man, and Peter is Spider-man so, by extension, people like _him_ , too. 

Sort of. It works if he doesn’t think too much about it. 

But it also isn’t the best part of the day. When he’s fighting bad guys or looking for bad guys to fight or even just aimlessly patrolling, he’s focused on all that stuff. He hones in all his senses and feelings and thoughts to the bad guys, to the criminals, to whatever he’s chasing or trying to do. There’s no extra space for unrelated thoughts or memories to come trickling in. In those moments, Peter is Spider-man and no one else. He has agendas and plans to follow, and additional feelings don’t come as part of those things. But when it’s just _him_ , just Peter Parker - even though he’s still donning the red and blue of the Spider-man suit as he heads home now - there is space for all that. For random little memories to come bubbling up to the surface or for realizations to hit him so hard he almost falls out of the sky. And Peter spends most of his day doing things so that he _doesn’t_ have to deal with those stupid memories or realizations that transport him back to the past, back to the places he would be super happy if he never had to think about again. 

Like the alleyway. Like the alleyway and the two upended trashcans and the rain dripping down from the gutter and the heady smell of iron even before the cracking noise ripped his universe in two and _he_ hit the ground in a collection of bones and blood and half-suppressed gasps of pain and Peter was too slow, always too slow. Or like the emptiness of the apartment and the dust gathering on the countertops and the number that is no longer reachable and the cold, cracking feeling in his chest as he realized he is so, so alone and the phone calls that were never answered and the - 

“Okay,” Peter says loudly, cutting his rapidly spiraling thought track off with a snap. He whips around the corner of a building and shoots down a back alley, breathing hard. His chest feels weird and tense. “Shut up, why don’t we?”

There’s a reason for all that caution tape, after all. He’s surviving, and he’s doing it great, honestly, but it’s still hard enough as it is without every shitty thing that’s ever happened to him resurfacing every other night. He just doesn’t have time for that when it comes down to it all. Survival is all about compartmentalization, or whatever, and sometimes that means repressing a couple of things. Forgetting stuff. Moving on. Whatever, right? Everyone does that. Totally healthy.

_You’re such a good kid, Pete, p-please don’t - forget that -_

He nearly misses a head-on collision with a lamp post and spits out a curse around the rapidly tightening feeling in his chest. Focus, he has to _focus;_ he’s almost home -

_Please, he’s - don’t hurt him, please -_

Peter hits the ground, hard, half-hoping that the impact can somehow dislodge the voices playing out in the back of his head or the smell of gas that feels like it’s still clinging to him, after all these months, or the shaky, burning feeling that’s starting to crawl over his limbs. It makes him feel panicky and short of breath and weirdly tired, at the same time. Like his body isn’t sure whether or not it wants to take off running or pass out right then and there.

“Nope,” he mutters, shaking the final web off his hand and rubbing his finger on his side for good measure. “No time for that.”

There never is, really. He presses his back against the wall beside him, feels the roughness of the brick through the fabric of his suit. That’s here. That’s here right now and it’s real and he can feel it and he has to focus on the things that he can physically feel. He’s _here._ He’s _safe._

Peter breathes out and his breath forms a cloud around him. His lungs feel tight. The brick is hard and jagged. There is no one here but himself. _Safe_.

And he doesn’t have time to panic, to go back inside his head and get stuck there. Especially not on work nights.

Honestly, Peter’s not sure which god in what universe finally raised its head and granted him what was probably the luckiest strike of his entire life, but they did, and _god,_ was it a lucky strike. Sure, McDonald'ss is weird and smells _really_ weird and after a week of working there he had started to smell permanently like their chicken nuggets but it’s a _job_. It’s a job which gives him employee discounts which means he gets both money and free food for mopping floors and dealing with the high-out-of-their-mind customers that only show up in the middle of the morning.

In retrospect, it was probably because he was the only guy who actually ticked the box for being willing to work the night shifts on his application form, probably. The place gets a lot of students from Midtown Tech High, saying as it’s, like, a block and a half away from the place, but since all of those people are students and therefore need to get some amount of sleep, or at least leave time to do their homework, the applicants for the nightshifts were few and far between. That is, until Peter finally hunted down a form and filled it out. He didn’t care, really, about the bad hours. It worked out great, honestly. From mid-morning till late at night he’d patrol, then head back to his place to grab his uniform, then down a few blocks and change in the alleyway outside the building. Then, from one till five or six, he’d work before taking off and grabbing a few hours of sleep before the day started all over again.

Sometimes the sleep thing is refuted, but it’s not like Peter minds that much. He can suppress things all he wants during the day, but nightmares are the one thing he’s never fully got a handle on and those _suck_. Really, really suck. 

So sometimes he doesn’t sleep. Sometimes he just lays in his bed and counts the cracks in the ceiling until the sun starts rising and he gets up to find breakfast. Sometimes he takes a few extra hours at McDonald's's. Sometimes he just stays out patrolling the whole night and trips over his apologies to his coworkers the next day for not showing up. And that’s okay. Ever since the weird spider bite thing, sleep has been one of the things he can forgo easily. Probably payback for the fact that he has to eat a ridiculous amount of food during the day just to stay functional. 

Point is, things are fine. Peter nods his head in affirmation at this internal statement as he pads down the alley and hops up onto the fire escape steps, hurrying up to the top floor of the apartment building he’s stopped at.

Technically speaking, it’s not his apartment but, after discovering it one night a couple months back, Peter took it upon himself to move in. The whole building could be abandoned, really, but sometimes Peter hears weird scraping noises and what could be screaming on the nights he’s sleeping there, so he decided long ago not to test that theory. Better safe than sorry and, besides, as far as abandoned apartments go, this one isn’t half bad. It’s small - just a kitchen and bedroom, really - and here’s no electricity or hot water - sometimes no water period - and half the windows in his room have been broken, but there were some leftover clothes in the drawers he was able to use and a bed he was able to sleep on so, really, he’s not complaining at all. It’s a roof over his head for when he needs it. That’s all that matters.

And, hey, whatever keeps everything on his own terms, right?

Quietly, even though he probably doesn’t have many neighbors to disturb, Peter pulls back the window and crawls in through his bedroom. He stops to grab his bad with his folded up uniform, three dollars in change, and bottle of water he took from work before hopping back through the window and leaping off the fire escape, shooting through the air.

Yeah, this _is_ nice. Intrusive thoughts aside, he’s not sure if there’s anywhere else he’d rather be right now.

 _Home_ , a voice prompts and Peter furiously ignores it. No time for _that_ , either.

He touches down in the alley right outside of McDonald's’s. The street around him is totally deserted and all the surrounding buildings are restaurants, meaning he doesn’t really have any residents to disturb, but still he ducks behind one of the dumpsters as he tugs off his mask and unzips the suit, tossing is aside in favor of his black and yellow uniform. It smells okay, considering he hasn’t been able to wash it in a few days. Normally he just cleans clothes in the sink, but the water in the apartment complex has been shut off again, ruling that possibility out. Maybe if it’s just him tonight he can clean it before he leaves. And the Spider-man suit, too. That’s been looking a little rough for the past few days. 

Carefully stuffing said suit deep into his bag, he smoothes out the front of his shirt and tries to arrange his hair into a style that doesn’t make it look like he just flung himself through the air at top speed for five minutes before stepping out of the alley and into McDonald's’s.

“‘Sup, dude!”

One of the only other nightshift coworkers, Ned Leeds, is already standing behind the counter, hat slightly askew, waving enthusiastically at him. Peter raises a hand in greeting as he heads to the cabinet in the back to grab some cleaning supplies and start wiping down the ketchup-y mess splattered across the tables in the front.

Ned Leeds is a sophomore at Midtown High. Aside from being a raging insomniac - hence the weird working hours alongside Peter - the guy is probably a genius and the only person on the planet who Peter would point a finger at and somewhat comfortably call a _friend_. It’s hard not to like him, really. Ned is all smiles and boundless energy, willing to sit and listen to Peter ramble on for hours or take the wheel of conversation on the days that Peter doesn’t want to so much as open his mouth to breathe, let alone talk. They both like Star Wars, horror movies from the 80s, god-awful romcoms, engineering, and chemistry. Ned is blisteringly funny and really just the nicest person Peter’s met in a very long time and he’s pretty sure that, if things came down to it, Peter would calmly lay down his life for the sake of the guy’s wellbeing. 

“You’re late!” Ned calls as he reemerges, bucket and mop in tow. “That’s the third time this week, dude!”

Peter tries to remember what day it is for a few seconds - ballpark guess would be Thursday but, then again, he always guesses Thursday - before giving up and just throwing a grin over his shoulder at Ned.

“What can I say? I’m a busy guy,” he says, scrubbing at the corner of the room with the mop. He hears Ned abandon his post at the cash register - it’s not like he needs to be there in the first place; they get like two customers during their shifts if they’re lucky - to come and perch himself on the corner of one of the tables next to Peter.

“You’re always busy,” Ned points out, swinging his legs a little. “Also, what was it this time?”

“Huh?”

Ned sighs, a little long-sufferingly. “Your _face_ , dude. You look like you lost a fight with a trash compactor.”

Peter isn’t sure whether he should laugh or be unnerved at how close attention Ned is paying to his general wellbeing. There’s a sort of unspoken agreement between the two of them to not really talk about Peter’s life - even though he’s certain Ned figured there was something off about it within a week of them meeting - because it makes Peter wildly uncomfortable and skip shifts, but sometimes Ned can’t help himself. Which is fine - nice, even; though the concern makes Peter feel that same, panicky feeling as before - but definitely not a habit he wants to encourage. So he just shrugs again and grins.

“You know me, dude,” he says, carefully keeping his gaze on the mop in front of him. “Clumsy guy.”

If ‘clumsy’ is a relative term for ‘fighting off a random mugger earlier that afternoon who didn’t seem to know how to use his wors very well and instead punched the daylights out of Peter before he stuck the guy to a wall,’ then, yeah, sure, he’s clumsy. 

Ned is, of course, supremely unconvinced, but he drops that particular line of questioning. “You want some ice?” is all he says.

Peter half-shrugs. Asking for things is not his favorite pastime. If Ned wants to get him ice, he can get him ice. The dude doesn’t have to do anything he wouldn’t do of his own volition. 

But it’s Ned, so of course the guy hops off the table, hurries around the back of the counter, and returns a few seconds later with a plastic bag wrapped up in a dishcloth. Peter sets his mop aside - again, he’s pretty sure the negative amounts of customers they’re going to get today are going to be okay with a little ketchup here and there - and collapses into the seat next to him, sighing as he presses the ice to his face. The other cool thing the spider bite gave him - aside from no need to sleep, super strength, general stickiness, and probably some more things Peter doesn’t know about yet - was enhanced healing so, in a couple of hours, he’ll be looking good as new, but getting punched in the face is still getting punched in the face. Ergo, it still _hurts_ , and the ice is really nice. 

“Thanks,” he mutters, feeling a little stupid. Not like it’s Ned’s job to take care of him, or anything, even if the guy would totally protest that statement. “That was fast.”

Ned, returned to his original position on the table next to Peter, huffs a laugh. “Dude, I literally keep that in the fridge on watch just for you. Every other day you come in here looking like you’ve just gotten, like, six cinder blocks thrown at your face.”

Peter snorts and buries his bruised eye into the bag. “I think it makes me look cool,” he says, voice muffled by the towel. “Like Tyler Durden, or something,”

Ned echoes his snort. “Oh, totally. Brad Pitt has _nothing_ on you.”

“Brad Pitt wants what I have,” Peter grins, moving the ice bag to gesture at himself. “Look at this. He could _never_.”

Ned hums in agreement, a smile audible in his voice as he says, “Totally. I’m sure it’s all he’s ever wanted, to be a scrawny, undersized sixteen year old kid who _really_ need a haircut, dude, can we please talk about this?”

“No,” Peter says, leaning forward to duck away from Ned’s outstretched hand. It’s more on a point of principle now, as well as being overdramatic, that he won’t let Ned ruffle his hair like he’s undoubtedly trying to do. Peter’s known Ned and _likes_ Ned enough to not freak out when the guy tries to give him side hugs or playfully punch his shoulder or ruffle his hair. It’s honestly kind of nice sometimes. “We can’t. My hair is great.”

“You look like Billy Mayfeild, dude, seriously -”

“Who’s that?” Peter asks, swatting Ned’s hand away with a grin and settling back into his chair. 

Ned’s mouth drops open into a comical ‘o.’ “You - are you kidding me? Have you not seen _Stranger Things?”_

“What’s that?”

Ned’s affronted expression only increases as he hops off the table and hurries back to the counter. Peter watches, half-smiling, as Ned digs around back for something before letting out a triumphant ‘a-ha!’ and moving back over to him. The guy sits himself down at the chair next to Peter and holds out his phone, unlocking it and pulling up an app Peter knows to be Netflix. He smiles fully this time. Of course it’s some weird TV show Ned’s undoubtedly gotten obsessed with in two and a half days straight and is now going to drag Peter down the rabbit hole with him.

“It’s a TV show,” Ned explains, scrolling through his recently watched and finally clicking on it. “So good, dude, so good. I think I’m in love with Noah Schnapp - you’ll see. His hair makes him look like an 18th century peasant boy here but in real life he is - wow. Amazing. Can’t believe you’ve never seen this, dude, season two just came out and everyone’s been _freaking out_. So good.”

They sit in silence, waiting for the first episode to load for a moment before Ned turns to him.

“Oh, did you see the whole thing at the bank on the news?”

Peter shakes his head. “News is for old people.”

Ned rolls his eyes empathetically. “Dude, you are living under a rock. It really is an issue. No, Spider-man, dude, he stopped this bank robbery and exposed this whole undercover operation and apparently the guys had stolen, like, a million bucks over the past few months and Spider-man stopped it all!”

Peter has to work to keep his face totally straight as he nods slowly. _Remenver, people like Spider-man. They won’t like him if he ends up being Peter Parker._ “Cool, man.”

Ned gives him a despairing look as eerie theme music starts playing in the background. “I gotta be real, Peter, your lack of enthusiasm surrounding Spider-man is very upsetting. He’s so _cool_ , man, what’s not to like?”

Peter wonders if Ned would think Spider-man is still that cool if he found out who the guy was and what the guy’s clusterfuck of a life was really like. But that thought makes him a little sad, so he pushes it under the caution tape and jerks his head at the phone in Ned’s hand.

“Nothing, dude.” He jerks his head at the phone. “I think it’s started.”

It has, and it turns out being pretty good - really good, actually; so good that Peter can almost completely ignore the sidelong, vaguely worried glances Ned gives him every once and a while. Almost.


	2. Chapter 2

“Okay, run it one more time. Without the light show m, though. It’s getting on my nerves - literally. I feel like I’m having a stroke just watching it, or a seizure, or something - am I epileptic? Run a diagnostic on that.”

“You are not an epileptic, boss. Also, there is no way of running the new unibeam simulator without _the light show_ , as you put it, since the unibeam in question naturally works as a bright light source. Also, it has been nearly 96 hours since you last slept, I think -”

Tony Stark absently waves a hand, cutting his AI off with a snap of his fingers. No offence to her, of course; Friday is a saint in human form - or artificial, really - but sometimes her nagging grates on his nerves a little. A lot, actually. 

But, grated nerves or not, Friday is, as always, relentless. Tony heavily resists the urge to slam his head into the wall in front of him as she continues speaking - _lecturing him_ , really - in the usual mechanically concerned tone she adopts for situations like this.

“Boss,” she intones long-sufferingly - _god_ , only he would somehow manage to make an AI that could sound _long-suffering_. “I believe you have already been informed that these sorts of behaviors are unhealthy and bad practices to develop -”

He snorts. “Only about - 6.4 billion times, uh - who died and made you Rhodey, by the way? I ask in the name of science, purely -”

“- and I am also sure that you are aware of my new protocol?”

He probably was told about it at some point, but Tony’s memory retention is getting more and more like one of those giant pasta strainers with each passing day. He frowns, turning on his heel to study the surrounding lab. He should probably look into that.

Friday, taking his silence as an obvious _no_ , carries on, her voice following him as he meanders around the worktables, kicking idly at piles of scrap metal. “The protocol states that I must inform either Miss Potts or Colonel Rhodes if go more than 24 hours without sleeping for a sustained period of time.”

Tony tosses himself down into a chair next to one of the workbenches and scoops up a coffee mug next to him. He sniffs experimentally at the contents before tossing it aside, nose wrinkled. Motor oil again. Fucking DUM-E. “Define _sustained_ ,” he says to the ceiling.

“I believe Miss. Potts and Colonel Rhodes define sustained as over six hours -”

“Six hours? What, do they think I _don’t_ have anything to do now, or something?”

“Miss Potts is the CEO of Stark Industries, one of the busiest and largest companies in the world right now, and, from her weekly diagnostic reports, it seems she endeavors to get at least seven hours of sleep a night -”

”First of all, Miss Potts doesn’t count as an example. I’m convinced she’s superhuman.” 

“- and I’m sure you would be able to do the same if you put your mind to it, boss. I, personally, would be more than happy to assist in clearing some time in your schedule to allow for more rest. Also, I am under the impression that you are not supposed to be doing anything currently -”

“False! That is a false impression right there.”

“- as you are still in a recovery period, in accordance with Dr. Cho’s orders.”

“Dr. Cho can go - boil her head, or something.”

“Would you like me to pass on that message to her, boss?”

Tony opens his mouth to argue, then feels the corner of his lips twitch up into a begrudging smile as he recognizes the note of amusement in the AI’s voice. “Do that and I’ll deprogram you before you can say ‘boss’ again. And, anyways -” He pulls himself out of the chair and restarts his aimless laps around the lab, picking up a half-assembled circuit board to stare at as he does so. “- I’m fine, actually. No more rest for me. That you _can_ pass on to Helen.”

“It has not even been two weeks since -”

“Can it, Friday.” He tosses the circuit board aside and stops in the middle of the workshop, sighing. What was he looking for again? Was he even looking for something in the first place? Is it still Saturday? What time is it and where the _fuck_ did he leave his coffee?

“I believe you were not looking for anything specific, no - it is early Sunday morning, 4:45 a.m., and you finished your last cup of coffee approximately three hours ago. The cup is on the far workbench to your left.”

“Did I say that all aloud?” he asks, frowning a little. Above him, a ceiling light flickers in affirmation.

“Yes, boss, you did.”

“Huh.” Then, “Huh. Three hours.” No wonder everything feels so - weird. Buzzy, kind of. That’d be the tiredness, probably. Tony scrunches his face up, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes for a moment before exhaling heavily, like the motion can dislodge some of the lingering tiredness that’s clinging to the edges of his brain like cobwebs. Four days is really not a long time to go without sleeping. He’s done worse. There was that one time at MIT, for example, when he had skipped his intended sojourn home for the Christmas holidays to crash in a hotel room just outside of the city and build several robots using spare parts from the electrical appliances dotted around the hotel room. He really hadn’t wanted to go home and, to sixteen year old, severely inebriated Tony, that had seemed like the most logical course of action to follow. That time he hadn’t slept for a week.

He hadn’t wanted to go because of something Howard had done. Or said. He was being a dick, probably. Did that a lot. Tony jumping ship pre or mid-holiday breaks had become almost routine by the time he had graduated.

_Howard!_

No, no. It had been that whole argument over the phone about the company. Tony taking over. He remembers it now. Insults had been exchanged (that had been mostly Tony) and threats had been made (that had been mostly Howard). Not good.

_Help my wife…_

And just like that, with just _two_ lines of that video playing on loop in the back of his head, Tony’s not in the lab anymore. He’s staring, wide-eyed with his chest tightening, at a deserted street corner. The road is lined with thick undergrowth and everything smells like smoke and motor oil and the sandy path underneath him is dotted with dark flecks and he can hear her screaming, begging, _pleading_ for him to stop - for the hand to stop tightening and Tony can’t move and everything reeks of iron now and there’s so much blood, so much blood -

“Mr. Stark?”

And then he blinks and he’s back in the workshop with the warm walls and bright blue holograms dotting the work tables and the gentle sound of his bots beeping at their charging station. He drops his hands away from his face and uncurls them - he didn’t even remember balling them in the first place - wincing a little. There’s a nice set of angry red crescent moons lining his palms now.

_Did you know?_

Tony swallows, hard. This is the problem about not sleeping. It gets harder and harder to reign everything in - all the shit that went down with Barnes and Steve at that base out in the middle of fuck-all, Siberia. Gets harder and harder to stop thinking about it, harder and harder to pretend the perpetual chill that follows him is just because of the janky thermostat and not because a part of him froze solid in that bunker in time with the shield crashing down on his reactor, splitting his suit open and driving a jagged line of metal into his chest. It gets harder and harder to pretend that the shake in his left hand is just because his hands have _always_ been a little shaky - _god_ knows his father used to bitch about it all the time - and not because one of Steve’s friends dropped a car on it before someone - Steve or Barnes; he can’t remember - dislocated his shoulder and tore a couple of tendons in his wrist for good measure. 

It just gets harder in general.

He swallows again and closes his eyes. The burning in the back of his head stops a little at that, which is nice. But he can’t sleep - doesn’t have time to, doesn’t particularly want to, either. He has the stupid Accords to review for the billionth time, more medical reports from Rhodey to look over, a million and one things to do for the company, Mark 47 to keep working on and the War Machine Mark 18 to start and these stupid unibeam simulators to tweak and Pepper to email and Vision to try and track down for the fifth time that week - stupid fucker had dropped off the face of the earth by the time Tony had returned to the compound - and his taxes to run and Happy’s car to refurbish and Barnes’s pardon to start drafting and the mental blockcade surrounding Barnes’s pardon to surmount without processing anything too much and HYDRA tapes to review and probably infinity plus one other things to sort out, all of which leave negative amounts of space to _sleep_.

Plus, nightmares. And what Pepper and Rhodey don’t know won’t hurt them, right?

“Right here,” he mutters, giving his head a final shake before carefully pushing the mountain of all things Howard and Maria and Barnes and Steve related back to the corner of his mind where it belongs and firmly slamming the lid back down on the boiling pot of anger and resent and hurt and grief that’s sitting in his stomach. “Make - can you make me another pot of coffee, please? Very black. No sugar. Several shots of espresso. Or, hey, throw some liquor in there. Surprise me. What’s that shit called again?”

“Irish coffee, boss, and -”

“Hey, you’re Irish, perfect!”

“I am not Irish, boss.”

“Well, you sound Irish.”

“I am a computer program. I do not have a nationality. Also, Miss Potts is nearing the compound.”

 _Shit._

_Shit, shit, shit,_ shit. 

Tony jerks into action, hurrying over to the workbench he was at before and tossing the unibeam prototype into one of the surrounding doors. Something crunches from inside and he winces. That’s probably going to be annoying to fix. “Uh - Miss Potts, you said?”

“Yess, boss. She is about five minutes away.”

Of course. Of course! This is _exactly_ the sort of thing Tony does _not_ fucking need to deal with right now. Out of all the people - _all_ the people! Literally _anyone_ else could’ve showed up - Happy, Rhodey, Ross, Fury, Natasha, Helen Cho, fucking _Vision,_ even - but _no_. It’s _Pepper_. It’s Pepper and Tony hasn’t seen her face to face in _months_ now - all their communication has been done over emails and voice calls and video chats - and he probably looks like hell froze over. At the very least he _knows_ all the bruises and cuts on his face are far from healed and he can still barely walk without grimacing and his stupid _hand_ won’t stop _shaking_ all the goddam time and, god, he’s barely _spoken_ to her since he returned to the compound; how is he supposed to pretend that things are normal and fine and under control? How is he supposed to act like the past month never happened - even if it _really_ did - and one of his best friends on the planet totally _didn’t_ keep a humongous secret for two and a half years before trying to kill Tony after _he_ tried to kill him and his _other_ stupid brainwashed friend for keeping said secret? What about _that_ is not going to make Pepper pass out with worry?

(How on earth is he supposed to look her in the face and not shatter from the inside out trying to avoid telling her about Siberia, trying to avoid the mere _idea_ of Siberia in general?)

Not to mention the fact that they’re supposed to be on a break - stupid, _stupid_ break - and there’s that fun, totally unavoidable fact of life that he misses Pepper so much it’s like there’s a physical hole in him and - _god._ This is not good.

“You didn’t, oh, I don’t know, think to tell me about this, or anything?” he growls, throwing some more spare parts out of sight. “Kind of - _shit -”_ He hisses in pain as the sharp edge of one of the saws he’s manhandling slices along the pad of his thumb. “- one of the things I need you to do, Fri, not gonna lie.”

“I did tell you,” Friday responded, a hint of affrontement in her voice now. “Several hours ago, I mentioned to you that Miss Potts was en route back to the compound, as her business trip to Japan had wrapped up the previous day. I gave you her estimated return time - approximately five in the morning.”

Tony really, really wants to scream. That sounds like it’d be nice. Instead he just sucks on his thumb, wincing at the sour taste of blood that fills his mouth and wincing harder at the flashes of the dirt road and smashed car and cries of _Howard_ the taste brings up. Not the time; probably never will be. “Okay, well, that was _several hours ago_. Little more heads up next time, ‘kay?”

“Yes, boss.” Then, “Miss Potts has entered the compound and is requesting access to the workshop. I have granted her permission -”

_“Friday! -”_

“Might I remind you, boss, it has been several months since Miss Potts has seen you and there has been no direct communication since your return. She is undoubtedly very concerned and -”

“Pepper doesn’t give a _shit_ about me,” he hisses, glaring up at the ceiling. “We really need to talk about you taking too much liberty recently because it’s really starting to become an issue and I’m honestly not - oh, hey, Pepper!”

He tries to keep his start to what could be passed off as a stress-induced muscle spasm, or something, as the shadowy figure at the door of the workshop materializes into the shape of Pepper Potts, punches a few things into the keypad, and steps inside, doors hissing shut behind her. She’s not carrying her bag - must’ve dropped it off upstairs - and her arms are folded across her chest as she makes her way inside, carefully avoiding another stray pile of hammered-out metal sheets.

She looks tired as she makes her way over towards him. Her movements are stiff and brittle, almost, and there’s the unmistakable tightness around her mouth and brow that she gets whenever she doesn’t sleep great. The lights of the workshop have been dimmed down - the brightness combined with the obnoxious flashing of the unibeam simulator really _had_ started to make him feel like he was going to have a seizure - but, even still, the dark shadows under her eyes pop out at him.

 _She knows,_ a panicked voice tells Tony as he half-steps out to greet her. _Someone - Steve, Barnes,_ someone _\- told her what happened and that’s why she looks so tired because she knows and she can’t know; no one can know, no one -_

“You’re bleeding.”

He blinks once. Stares down at his thumb, then half-shrugs. “Yeah. Saw accident.”

It’s the first words they’ve said to each other’s faces since their split - nearly three months ago, now - and Tony sort of wants to throw himself through the workshop window at how totally, utterly _hopeless_ he is at this. There’s a million things he wants to say to Pepper, a million apologies and promises he’s actually going to keep this time and all he can mamage is _yeah, saw accident?_ Of course. _Typical_.

Tony swallows again and waves his non-injured hand vaguely at the workshop around them. “I, uh - sorry it’s such a - a mess in here. I - didn’t know you were coming. Well, I did - Friday told me - but it slipped my mind. S - yeah. Sorry.”

Something miniscule in Pepper’s jaw clenches and if it wasn’t for the fact that Tony’s spent the better part of the last decade with her, learning all her tiny reactions and signs and telltale quirks, he would’ve missed it totally. He still can’t tell if it’s an angry thing or a stressed thing or a both thing - or a neither thing, even - though, so maybe the last decade really has been a bust. _Well done him_ for that.

“You’re supposed to be resting,” she says. Her gaze is hovering somewhere over his shoulder and Tony suddenly has the almost-irresistible urge to fall to the floor. Not sure why, really. Maybe it’s his chest. Probably his chest.

Pepper doesn’t sound angry as she speaks, though. More - concerned. It makes his skin crawl a little; he’s pretty sure he’s the last person deserving of concern on the planet right now, much less concern coming from none other than Pepper Potts. 

So he just continues waving his hand around. “Uh - yeah. That is - that is correct -”

“I’m sensing a but.”

“- but - yes, there was one coming - I actually feel very, uh, rejuvenated now. So, uh, ixnay on the leepsay. I’m perfectly fine, though. Nothing to worry about. How was the flight?”

Pepper gives him a long, hard look that makes Tony feel like she’s bypassing observing his facial expressions or body language or whatever she always does to get such a good handle on him in five seconds flat and going straight to reading his mind. 

_Ice and blood metal on metal on metal and “he’s my friend too” and I was going to die, he was going to kill me, my best friend looked me in the eyes and was going to kill me and -_

“You’re an awful liar, you know that, right?” she says, voice somewhere between semi-amused and so, so tired. The tiredness is definitely his fault - even after all these months with god-knows how much distance in between them he still manages to make her life substantially more miserable, _awesome_ \- which makes him want to scream even more. 

He just shrugs. “Jury’s out. I am fine, though.”

“Helen sent me your medical report.”

 _Ah. Fuck._ “Oh? I thought that was, like, confidential? Isn’t - isn’t that how - doctors work, or whatever?”

 _Don’t ask about my chest, don’t ask about my chest, please do not ask about my chest_.

She gives him a look that’s just as tired as her voice. He can see her hands clenching and unclenching on her forearms and, god, he doesn’t know what to do now. He doesn’t know what to say that won’t end in some unwarranted confession of how _shit_ the past month has been, a thousand apologies for everything he’s done to her ever, or just flat out tears.

_Stark men don’t cry. Stark men are made of steel._

“She didn’t say how you got anything that happened to you. Said that was a conversation you should have with me on your own, if that’s what you want. But, yeah, Tony, you’re not fine -”

“Medical reports can be very misleading, you know. Just saying! Also, I heal fast.”

“Bullshit,” she says, taking a step forward. _Now_ she sounds angry and Tony’s entirely too exhausted and in pain and his vision is vibrating at the edges just a little too much for him to really know what to do or say next. He presses his index finger against the cut on his thumb and stuffs his left hand in his pocket and swallows again. “You’re not fine and you should be resting. When’s the last time you slept?”

“I -”

“Totally rhetorical question, by the way. Friday already sent me the report. _96_ hours, Tony? Your chest was _cracked open_ and you haven’t slept in _nintey-fucking-six_ hours? Why?”

 _Because every single time I shut my eyes or even stop_ moving _for more than five minutes I can’t see anything but my parents being murdered - not dying in a car accident but fucking_ murdered _\- by Steve Rogers’s best friend from the 40s who, by the way, is the Winter Soldier, did you know? Yeah, and, when it’s not hearing my mother beg for help as the life was literally choked out of her, I’m on a bunker floor in the middle of Siberia with Steve Rogers, again, sitting on my chest slamming his shield into me and he was going to kill me, he_ wanted _to kill me and he knew about my parents and he didn’t_ _tell me; one of my closest friends and he didn’t tell me_ anything _and I cannot - physically_ cannot _\- relive that moment any more than I already have if I’m expected to get through this week in any way, shape or form without throwing myself off the compound roof. So, yeah, no sleep. No sleep._

Aloud, he just says, “Not tired.”

The anger on her face cracks away to reveal deep, genuine fear that turns Tony’s whole mouth sour. This isn’t her job - _he_ isn’t her job or her responsibility or her _anything_ and she shouldn’t care like this.

“Okay, okay,” he mutters, holding a hand up in defeat, mostly just because the look in her eyes is making his chest hurt for totally not-shrapnel-damage related reasons. “I’ll sleep, okay? See you out first then I’ll head up to bed, deal?”

Pepper frowns, though she relaxes fractionally as she does so. “See me out?”

“Yeah, you - you just dropped in to, you know, say _hi,_ right?”

A beat. Then, “I was going to stay, actually. If - if that’s oka -”

“Yeah, yeah!” Tony nods his head aggressively and he doesn’t deserve this, doesn’t deserve her on such a magnitude it hurts even more than the cars, even more than the shield, even more than the single, shaky _yes_ and - “Of course. _Mi casa es su casa.”_

God, he’s so tired.

Pepper gives him a tiny smile. “You accent is horrible,” she huffs, moving to the door and holding it open for him. He ducks his head, squeezing by, and she gives another small smile as they start up the stairs together. “And, plus, I have a couple of conferences and meetings in the area over the next few weeks. Thought staying here would beat some hotel.”

“Of course,” Tony says, nodding seriously and trying to keep his breathing as level as possible as each step sends a weird stab of pain through his abdomen. “How many hotels have a bunch of semi-sentient robots that try and feed you motor oil and their semi- _conscious_ creator running around stabbing himself with handsaws and not sleeping for four days straight? This is an authentic experience right here, Miss Potts.”

She gives another small smile. “That’s one word for it.”

This is so easy. Her. Being with her, talking to her, cracking stupid jokes that make her smile in the way that Tony knows is her pretending she’s trying not to. This is so easy and _safe_. He feels so safe with her, so removed from the sharp edges and searing pain and taste of iron that makes up his memories of Siberia.

It’s only a little more heartbreaking than everything else to realize that she problem feels the exact _opposite_ of safe around him now. Totally deserved, but borderline-agonizing all the same.

He blinks himself back into his body as they arrive at the top of the stairs and move into the living room. Tony’s quarters are just down the hall and Pepper gives him a half-shove - careful to only make contact with his good arm - in the direction of it, looking stern.

“Sleep,” she commands, and it’s really like nothing’s happened, like they aren’t broken up and there’s not a jagged line running across Tony’s chest where his suit was sticking into it for a day and a half and he’s not a handful and a half and Pepper isn’t sick of his shit and things are just _okay_. “I’ll know if you don’t.”

He ducks his head again, swallowing around the sudden tightness in his throat. Everything feels very surreal and sped up right now. He’s probably hallucinating, which sucks, because even five minutes in the company of Pepper Potts and things already feel like they’re making more sense. Also, his head _hurts._ “Of course, ma’am.”

She snorts a little. “Oh, and when you wake up, I have some things I need you to look at, okay? Remind me.”

“What things?”

Pepper pauses for a few seconds - probably debating whether or not to keep pushing him in the direction of his bed or answer - before she speaks again. Smart. He’s definitely not passing up an opportunity to stay out of bed and away from the road and Siberia and Steve and his parents for even just a few seconds mire, no matter how beyond exhausted he might be. “There were a bunch of explosions near Richmond Hill in Queens last night. Looks like it could’ve blown up half the neighborhood if it wasn’t for someone who managed to stop it. He’s called Spider-man, apparently, and I think you’ll want to have a look at him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> off the walls tony and friday interactions are my literal FAVORITE thing to write it’s so much fun tony is Insane here....love him<3 also i think the tags say it yes this fic is set within a few weeks after civil war ...i can’t remember if i explain it or not but the injury on tony’s chest he’s referencing is from steve’s shield (thinking the suit probably broke and cut into him or smthin) ...also this fic is abt to tackle like six different issues at once get hyped ALSO it is not anti team cap!! most team cap aren’t even mentioned/won’t make an appearance and if it comes off that way pls remember it’s from tony’s perspective so of course he is upset abt everythung....ok thank u<3
> 
> also follow my tumblr @tnyystark. it’s fun. i am fun. i cry post about tony a lot. fun times!


	3. Chapter 3

It’s exactly six in the morning when Peter finally pulls his uniform hat on his head, mops the floor one more time for good measure, and bids Ned a good night - good morning, really, at this point. Well, Ned bids  _ him _ a good morning. He always lets the guy leave before him. Even though he knows Ned walks home in the opposite direction to the alleyway he normally changes in, it’s still way too risky to change back into his suit when Ned is around. Mostly because Ned is curious and, more to the point, not a fucking idiot. He’s going to realize something is up if he even catches a glimpse of Spider-man in the same-ish location as Peter Parker. God knows Peter’s weird enough as it is to probably make Ned suspect that he’s like, doing crack (not true), or not going to school (true), or has some super-secret identity that no one in the world other than he knows about (really, really true).

Point is, Ned could put two and two together and get four. And that would leave Peter in a lot of shit he doesn;t remotely have time for, so he plays it safe. Waits at least ten minutes after Ned walks out the door, overhead bell dinging a little, to throw himself out the back window and hastily tug off his uniform in favor of the Spider-man suit. Clear of the window, he reaches into his backpack and pulls out the Spider-man suit, surveying it for a second.

Okay, not his best work, definitely. His  _ only _ work, really - he’s been wearing the same suit for, give or take, two years now. It’s not like has better options, really. Sure, the blue and red sweatsuit look is a little rudimentary and sure, it’d be cool to, like, roll up to the Avengers’ Tower and ask them for some cash to make a better, less clunky, less vaguely terrifying-looking suit - or just ask for a new suit from them - but that’s just a bad idea, he figures. The Avengers are all smart. They’ll probably get a little weirded out by whatever explanation he managed to conjure up as to why he can’t make a better suit himself, and that definitely sounds like it’ll cause more trouble than it’s worth. 

So he sticks with the old suit. Fine. It’s fine. It does the job and that’s what matters. The only two important things are the web-slingers - in tip-top condition, have been since the day he made them out of spare parts and broek circuitry he found in the dumpster behind Midtown Tech High a while back - and the mask, which is, you know, super weird looking, but, again, does the job. The goggles in particular are important - one of the fun and exciting things he quickly learned about after that spider bite was that every single one of his senses has been elevated by, like, seventeen levels. Which is, you know,  _ great  _ if he’s trying to eavesdrop on bad guys or stop moving cars with his bare hands, but not so great when he’s in the middle of a fight and suddenly his entire nervous system decides to shut down because everything is suddenly too loud and bright and hard to focus on.

Yeah, those fights had  _ not _ been fun. But he fixed the problem! He doesn’t have nervous-system-failure-attack-thingies anymore - or whatever the technical term for them is - or at least has them infrequently enough for him to put them low down on the list of Peter Parker’s Problems, and that’s that. 

So he tugs on the mask and flicks on the web-slingers and pulls up his socks and, after exhaling hard a couple of times, tosses his backpack into the air and sticks it to a nearby wall, just out of sight from the entrance of the alley. Hopefully that will stay hidden. He’s gone a solid four months without losing this backpack which is the longest he’s gone in a while and  _ more _ backpacks really aren’t what he needs to spend his money on. Especially not since winter is right around the corner and there are, helpfully enough, zero blankets in the apartment and he really does not need to contract hypothermia this Christmas. And to avoid that, he needs blankets which means he needs money to buy said blnkets which means he cannot blow the grand total of thirty-something dollars he has on another stupid backpack.

It’s hidden, though, so he’s fine. Probably. Whatever. Peter does his best to shake off any lingering doubts as he leaps up into the air and fires a web at a nearby lamp post, swinging himself around and starting on his morning patrol.

_ Yeah _ , he thinks as he swoops around a building corner, toes dragging along the brick a little, morning sun starting to warm the back of his head.  _ This is nice. _

* * *

* * *

Yeah, patrolling is nice. Nice and, more often than not, mind-numbingly boring.

Wishing for crime is definitely not a good thing to do and  _ definitely _ not what Peter is wishing for but still. Swinging around Queens all day, only pausing to stop random bicycle thieves, get harangued by a random old dude about chemicals in the water, and buy lunch from a random coffee shop isn’t the most thrilling way to spend his time. 

Peter supposes he should be grateful, really. The last major thing he had to deal with was some bank robbers up near Richmond Hill a couple of days ago and  _ that _ had left him feeling like he had been run over with a semi-truck. He had spotted the guys exiting the bank that was most  _ definitely  _ closed and decided to see what they were up to. A couple rounds of punches, some really colorful swear words, and a few weird, purple-ish explosions later, Peter was half-laying in a bush with two unconscious robbers pinned to the floor near him and a pile of cash at his feet. He had slunk off before the police could get there and that had been the end of that little adventure, mostly. Ned had brought up something about Spider-man and bank robbers and  _ alien tech,  _ or something, the next day at work but Peter had been too busy trying not to re-break his ribs by bending down to grab a spare bottle of ketchup to pay much attention.

So, yeah, a couple days of peace after that had been nice, no doubt. But now he was healed. Healed and  _ bored. _

Peter eventually stops his rounds to perch on top of the fire escape of some residential building. Below him is a busy-ish looking intersection with a few restaurants and a bank on one corner - go figure. The street has quietened down, now that it’s dark. Nine, ten o’clock he’d guess, give or take an hour or so. It’s a weekday, so people are at home and in bed by now.

Peter’s pretty sure he should be in bed by now, too. It’s been a while since he last slept, and he can feel tiredness starting to claw at the edges of his vision, making the street below him swim a little. Okay. Peter exhales. Okay. 

“Focus,” he hisses to himself, surveying the area for something -  _ anything _ \- he can swoop in on. “Focus. Sleep later.”

Or never. Never works, too.

Thirty more minutes pass and Peter just sits there, watching the silent street below him. He’s bored and tired and hungry. Emphasis on the tired. Honestly, this isn’t worth it. Nothing’s going to happen tonight.

He stands, stretching out his stiff muscles, and is about to leap off the fire escape and into the sky when something below him skids loudly. A van has pulled up to the corner of the bank and, as Peter stands there, frozen, four guys pile out of it and, after some fussin with the door, enter the bank.

Peter grins, despite himself - crime is bad, crime is very bad - and crouches down, watching as the men file inside. “Finally,” he mutters, “Something  _ good. _ ”

He hits the ground and crosses the street in two seconds, entering the building in just one. The men are crouched around an ATM machine and a couple of canvas bags while one stands watch, back to the door.

_ Dumbass _ , Peter thinks delightedly, and props himself up against the wall by the door. The display glows behind him, his shadow sprawling out across the room. He clears his throat.

“‘Sup, guys. Forgot your pin number?”

The four of them turn in unison and Peter almost snorts. Their disguises are bad - and Peter’s seen a lot of bad disguises over the past couple of years. 

They guys are wearing fucking  _ Avengers _ masks. The kind that are sold at tourist shops on every corner, all plastic and shininess and really not that good of a face cover-up as the robbers probably think.

“Woah,” Peter says, pushing himself off the wall and stepping towards the men. “You’re the Avengers!”

Fake-Iron Man cocks his gun, eyes narrowing behind the slits in the mask. Fake-Thor half-rises to his feet and, figuring this might as well be wrapped up as soon as possible, Peter fires a web. He whips the gun out of Fake-Iron Man’s hand and sends it flying, catching both him and Fake-Thor’s faces. 

“Thor, Hulk, great to finally meet you guys!”

Peter jumps up to the ceiling and kicks Fake-Thor into Fake-Hulk before sending the latter crashing back into the display. There’s the sound of breaking glass and heavy grunting and Peter winces a little. Ouch.

“Thought you’d be more handsome in person,” he says, watching as the upside-down version of Fake-Thor lays in a heap on the floor, groaning. A circle of broken glass surrounds him and the man in the display’s face is a little dented around his nose where Fake-Thor hit it.

Fake-Iron Man is back on his feet now and, even with his  _ brilliant _ disguise, Peter can tell he’s pissed. The man throws a punch at his face, which he easily dodges. 

“Hi, Iron Man, great to meet you, too,” he says, jerking his head out of the way as Fake-Iron Man’s left hook cuts through the air next to him. “Dude, what are you doing robbing a bank? You’re a billionaire!”

Fake-Hulk makes another attack, which he easily dodges, too -  _ god _ , these guys are kind of slow, not going to lie - and then the  _ thing _ happens.

Fake-Captain America who, throughout the course of his exchanges with the other Fake-Avengers, had stayed oddly quiet. But now he’s on his feet, stepping over the semi-conscious body of Fake-Hulk, armed with a -

_ Wait, what is  _ that?

Peter squints at the -  _ thing _ in the man’s arms, which looks like someone’s taped a glowing tripod to a semi-automatic, only much more hi-tech and deadly looking, for all of two seconds before the glowing blue surrounding the prongs goes red and suddenly Peter  _ can’t fucking move _ .

He’s floating. He;s floating and his whole body is buzzing and he cannot move.

“Oh, this feels so weird!” he says and his voice comes out all wobbly and shaky and he can literally feel the energy from the tripod-gun thing burning through his body, charging up every single electron and, oh, this really does not feel good. Like, at all. 

Then he slams into the ground, then the ceiling, then the ground again and,  _ shit _ , something inside him  _ definitely _ feels a little broken and he’s really like to, you know, not be suspended in midair by a couple of bank robbers with weird weapons, but he can’t so much as move within the literal force field that’s keeping him in place.

“Shoot him,” Fake-Captain America grunts as Peter crashes into the window, something that he hopes is not his bones cracking - sure fucking feels like it is. “I’m sick of seeing this guy everywhere.”

Wait, they’ve met?

Oh. Oh, yeah. Richmond -  _ ow, fuck -  _ Hill. These must be the same guys. 

A gun near him cocks - from where, he can’t tell; he’s a bit too busy dealing with the fact that his body feels like it’s being microwaved and even his stupid goggles can’t block out the bright spots of white that are starting to pop in his vision to figure out who’s avout to shoot him anf he sould maybe be a little more concerned about this and -

And then the second _ thing  _ of the night happens.

Something heavy outside of his view lands on the ground there's the sound of yelling mixed with glass shattering, coupled with what sounds like a metal door folding in half. Then the pressure on Peter;s body releases and he hits the ground with a grunt. Above him, a weird whirring noise picks up and something explodes to his left. 

Peter presses his nose into the floor. It’s cold. His body feels like it’s been flame-rboiled for six hours and breathing has suddenly gotten a lot more tricky, but there’s no way he can let these stupid pseudo-Avenegers get away. No way. What on earth is the point in being Spider-man if he does?

So he stands. Blinks. Massages his ribs a little. And then - 

_ What the hell?  _

Then, because thinking it doesn’t feel like it has enough of an impact, “What the hell?”

Then again, because just saying  _ hell _ doesn’t feel like it really captures what he’s feeling right now, “What the  _ fuck?” _

Iron Man. The Iron Man - the  _ real _ fucking Iron Man is standing ten feet in front of Peter, arm still raised at the heap that is Fake-Captain America. Ten feet! A hundred and twenty inches! Peter could reach out and  _ touch  _ the guy, he’s that close. He can see each individual plate of armor, each scratch and stray strip of paint that adorned them, each nut and bolt that keeps it together. He can literally hear electricity pulsing through the wires inside of the suit, firing off a million different commands all at once because, come on, it’s the fucking  _ Iron Man _ suit; it can  _ totally _ do a million things at once. 

Ten feet.  _ Ten fucking feet.  _

Then something to his right explodes, and Peter whips around to receive a faceful of smoke and cinders. He can suddenly hear again, and the sounds of yelling and heavy scraping filled his ears. The robbers are, in Peter’s distractedness, starting up round two versus the ATM machine and, from the sounds of metal gearing on tile and grunting, they’ve literally removed the face of one of the machines and are removing cash from it by the handful. 

Which, really, is such a fucking bad idea - what do these guys think is gong to happen - that they’re going to get away, or something? Sure, Peter may suck, but fucking  _ Iron Man is _ here now. They don’t stand a chance. 

Shit.  _ Shit _ . Iron Man. Iron Man is watching him now. He needs to move - stop these dumbasses before anyone gets hurt. Or before he embarrasses the shit out of himself in front of Iron Man. Both. Mostly the first one. Definitely the second one, too.

“Hey, what’s going on over there?” Peter calls to the moving figures behind the still-settling smoke. One of them swears loudly and something clangs. “I thought we were done here! I mean, hello? Iron Man’s here?”

Another clang, more swearing. 

_ Okay, this is getting old.  _

Inhaling slowly, Peter tenses up and vaults himself over the wall of smoke, sticking to one of the unharmed ATM machines before launching himself at the masked attackers. His feet connect squarely with Fake-Captain America’s face and there’s a soft  _ crunch _ as the man toppled over, head smacking into the glass behind him. Ouch. That’s gotta hurt. 

“You know,” he says lightly, stepping aside as Fake-Hulk flings himself at him. He kicks the man in the back and sends him crashing face-first into one of the unharmed ATM machines. “I’m starting to think you’re not the real Av -”

A loud whirring cuts him off - way louder than anything that could come from Iron Man’s suit - and suddenly the air inside the bank feels charged. Electric. Like Fake-Captain America’s done the same thing he did to Peter with that tripod-thing, except to every single particle of air in the room. Peter’s skin starts to crawl and he sees Fake-Hulk on his feet, now armed with something heavy-set and glowing purple and Peter has three seconds to think  _ wait, I know that thing _ , before something explodes out of the box-like weapon the man’s toting and shoots right past Peter’s shoulder, cutting through the bank.

Oh.  _ Oh _ . That’s  _ not _ supposed to happen. 

He goes to move, raising his arms to fire something at the man to get him to stop  _ doing whatever the fuck he’s doing _ , when there’s another series of whirs - softer this time; are these from Iron Man this time? - and more grunting and suddenly Peter’s in the air again, breath knocked clean out of his body, and he’s flying -  _ what the fuck; why is he flying? _ \- and everything is cold and smells like smoke and electricity and then he hits the ground with a sharp grunt.

Peter scrambles to his feet, swinging his gaze around - bank, guns, weird purple alien tech, bank being cut in half,  _ what the fuck _ \- and panting. His whole torso feels like it’s been cracked in half and he can hear his heartbeat thudding in his head and somehow he’s gotten to the top of a building a couple down from the bank.

_ The bank. _ The bank which Peter can now see has a nice looking crack running through it from face to face. 

The bank has been cut in half. The Fake-Avengers cut the bank in half.

Peter spins again, trying furiously to get his breathing down to normal - this is fine, this is fine; this is a totally fixable fuck up of his - and catches sight of a hunk of red and gold shining through the darkness.

Iron Man. Iron Man is here.

Peter doubles up, pressing a hand to his chest and wheezing a bit, before speaking to the ground. 

“D -  _ oh _ , holy shit,” he says. His heart feels like it’s been stopped and then started up again several times in the space of two minutes. The hair on the back of his neck feels like it’s  _ burning _ with static electricity. Then again. “Holy fucking shit, man. They - the building - holy shit, holy shit - that - that’s -  _ shit _ \- the - we just  _ left _ \- the robbers -”

“They’re secure.” Iron Man says flatly and, straightening up, Peter can see they look like they’re all on the ground now, pinned down by these weird, cocoon-like capsules. Smoke is pouring out from the fissure that opened up and the glass around it is starting to warp and fold in on itself with the heat. Peter can hear sirens in the distance and Iron Man is now five feet away from him and the bank was literally just sliced in fucking  _ half _ and Peter’s  _ way _ too tired and hungry and sore and stressed out for  _ any _ of this to be happening right now. 

He’s hallucinating. Obviously. Obviously! This is one of those weird, convoluted dreams he has where everything starts out normal with him just patrolling, or something, and then a building is cut in half and, before he knows it, he’s somehow back in the alley with blood on his hands and salt on his lips and -

“Holy shit,” he says again, cutting off his thoughts easily.  _ Definitely _ not the time for that. “Holy shit. Holy shit.”

Iron Man - _Iron Man_ , fucking _Tony Stark_ \- is still standing there, seemingly watching the smoking facade of the building with a languid sort of interest, like it wasn’t just sawn in fucking _half_ by some weird purple laser. Like this is something he sees every day which, given that the guy is only one of the leaders of the fucking _Avengers_ - the Avengers, the _Avengers!_ \- it probably is. 

Peter turns to the Tony Stark in question, jabbing a gloved finger at the building in the distance, like the man can’t see it, or something. Maybe he can’t. There’s honestly no way he can be this fucking  _ calm _ in reaction to all that shit going down if he could actually see it. No way. Avenger or not, buildings don’t get cut in half every day. Sure, Peter sees the news, like, three times a month-ish - more if there’s something going on that Ned deems interesting enough to ramble about, but, honestly, not  _ much _ more - but even  _ he _ would’ve picked up on random bank robbers cutting buildings in half by now if it was anywhere near a regular occurrence. So there’s no logical way Tony Stark can be standing there, white eyes idly watching the smoke billow into the night air like it’s nothing.  _ No way. _

“You - you saw that, right?” he demands, voice cracking upwards a little -  _ nice going, Parker, way to bust out the teenage-superhero card after five fucking seconds _ . “Like - you -  _ shit _ , man - you  _ saw _ that, right? I’m - I’m not hallucinating, right? ‘Cause it’s been a  _ long _ day and I haven’t really -”

_ Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut the fuck up - _

“I’ve been busy,” Peter finishes lamely, thankful for once for his generally pretty creepy-looking mask and goggles so Tony Stark can’t see the semi-panicked flush he can feel creeping over his neck and cheeks. No one needs to know. Least of all Tony fucking  _ Stark. _ “So - like, that was - was that even  _ real?  _ Did - did you -?”

“I did,” the Iron Man suit confirms. The voice emanating from it is sort of tinny and robotic and one Peter practically has burned into his memory from the hours and hours of press conferences and interviews and news reports he watched as a kid. He had consumed every piece of Iron Man-related media content within a ten mile radius of himself by age ten - seriously, that guy was a legend to kid-Peter. And, even if he would be less willing to openly admit it - like,  _ come on _ , responsible, mature people don’t ogle after superheroes, especially when they’re not the vague beginnings of one themselves - present-day Peter’s brain is still short circuiting with the fact that Iron Man -  _ Tony Stark _ \- is standing five feet away from him in the fucking flesh. 

And he saw the building get cut in half, too. So Peter’s not crazy, at least. Just freaking out. Just hasn’t slept in, like, two days. Good to know. 

“You - wow,” he says, because that’s all there is to say, really. “ _ Wow _ . Why - where’d you  _ come _ from, man? You - don’t you usually do, like, bigger shi - ah,  _ stuff _ than this? Like, wormholes? Wait, are - are you really - like is this really -”

The suit in front of him hisses suddenly, front opening up to reveal the inside of it. The inside of it which happens to contain none other than the genuine, honest-to-god Tony Stark. 

The man steps out and onto the rooftop. He’s dressed in black pants and a clean-cut white shirt with a blazer thrown on top. There’s something written on the shirt - looks kind of like a drawing? - but it’s too dark and Peter’s goggles are too tinted to tell. His hair is sticking up on end and the trademark goatee Peter practically has plastered into his memory, thanks to his eight-year-old self, has grown out a little. He’s wearing orange-tinted sunglasses -  _ sunglasses _ in the middle of the fucking  _ night _ , seriously - but even the eyewear can’t cover the fact that there’s a livid-looking bruise around the underside of his left eye. Along with that are some nasty-looking, half-healed gashes on his nose, cheeks, and temples that look fresh but too old to have come from the battle just then. Even in the dull light from the street lamp across the road from them, the exhaustion carved into Tony Stark’s face is unmissable. 

He looks calm, though. Tired, but calm and completely in control. 

“Wow,” is all Peter can say after a moment of staring. “W-wow - Mr - Mr. Stark, sir, it’s an honor, first of all and I -  _ thank you _ for - for coming and helping, but - I - what are you -”

“Doing here?” Tony Stark finishes, tipping his head a little. Despite the bruises and cuts and obvious tiredness, there’s something about the way the man holds himself that just exudes confidence, in a very manufactured and carefully constructed way, at the least. Like he’s been doing this is whole life, which he probably has. Dealing with stuff like this - burning buildings and weird alien tech and people semi-freaking out at the mere  _ sight _ of him - probably comes as easily as breathing to the man.

“Y-yeah,” Peter says, then, realizing that is probably one of the dumber things he could’ve said, backtracks quickly. “Not that I’m like - not happy about it; seriously, Mr. Stark, sir, you hauled  _ ass _ in, like, an amazing way - but I - I mean you’re an Avenger, right? They - don’t you guys do more - I don’t know, intense stuff?”

Mr. Stark - Peter's decided that’s the only appropriate thing to call him;  _ Iron Man _ feels too informal and  _ Tony _ is on the opposite end of the familiarity spectrum - gives a tense smile that puts lid on some of Peter’s explosive excitement. 

God, he really looks exhausted. 

God,  _ Peter _ feels fucking exhausted, too.  _ God _ . Where did  _ that _ come from?

“You don’t watch the news much, do you?” Mr. Stark says after a pause. 

Peter shakes his head. “No, sir.” 

Mr. Stark gives a hum of approval. The light from the streetlamp glints off his glasses. “Good. It’s mostly garbage. Mostly. Plus, I’m not sure if now is the best time to get into all that. Also, cool it with the  _ sir _ thing. Not a fan.”

_ All of what?  _ “Uh - okay. Sorry, si - sorry.”

Mr. Stark waves a hand. “All is forgiven. Good job back there, by the way. You got skills, Mister - assuming you are a, uh,  _ mister _ , that is _.  _ Mister who? Got a name?”

“I do, but I, uh, I don’t - I mean -” Peter waves a hand around for a second, wiping some of the lingering ash of his goggles. “It’s kind of a - secret, you know? Like - I don’t know -”

Mr. Stark’s face goes carefully impassive and  _ great,  _ he’s already fucked something up. Fuck.  _ Great _ . Five minutes and he’s already made Tony Stark mad and said something stupid and now -

Then Mr. Stark just sighs, running his palms down on the front of his blazer. If it wasn’t for the stips of the white t-shirt visible up near the man’s neck, it would sort of look like the man’s head is floating with no body attached to it. “Well,” he says slowly, stuffing his hands into his pockets and surveying Peter some more. The sunglasses make his gaze impossible to read. “I’m gonna need to call you something.”

Oh, right.  _ Right _ . “Spider - Spider-man. I’m Spider-man, sir. That’s - yeah, people call me that.”

“Do they? You seem a bit on the young side to be a Spider- _ man _ .”

“I - I’m -”  _ Fuck. Fuck, fuck fuck _ . “I - ‘s just what people call me, sir.”

“No sir.”

“Right. Uh - Mr. Stark?”

Mr. Stark gives a weird half-laugh, half-sigh. “God, that makes me feel like my father.”

“Sorry.”

“Also cool it with the apologies. No need for all of them. You did good. Nothing to be sorry for.”

“Right.” 

Peter rocks back on his heels a little. Not knowing what to do with his hands - or what to do in general, really - he tugs on the hoodie strings of his suit for a second before shoving his hands deep into his pockets, copying Mr. Stark’s stance. The man has returned his gaze to the bank and bodega below them, watching unblinkingly as a red and blue lights wash over the surrounding buildings as the cops finally come. Peter can’t help but scoff a little and he feels Mr. Stark’s gaze flick over to him for a second.

“Sorry,” he mutters, kicking at a loose bit of concrete. “Cops always take their time, that’s all. Kinda dumb.”

He should know, of course. He spent seven minutes kneeling in that alleyway before anyone came out to help him and a further fifteen minutes with a stranger’s hand on his back and their soothing words stopping miles before entering his ears as he waited for the police to just fucking  _ come _ and  _ find _ the guy who did this, who did  _ that _ to -

Okay. Not the time. 

Mr. Stark gives a little _ hm _ of agreement. “They do.”

There’s another pause in the conversation. They watch in silence as the cop cars pull into the intersection, men clad in black and blue rushing out of the cars and over towards the building, guns raised. The faint sounds of them yelling drift over to where Peter and Mr. Stark stand, silent.

“Do - do you think they - the cops - are gonna know we were there?” he asks, mostly for the sake of saying something. The silence feels weird and heavy, like Peter’s being crushed by something and the fact that Mr. Stark is standing so still and impassive he might as well have been a marble statue tucked away in the back room of some museum or other isn’t helping matters much.

Mr. Stark makes another humming noise in the back of his throat. Peter can see his hands balling into fists in the pocket of his jacket and he has the weird, sudden desire to ask the man - Iron Man,  _ the _ Iron Man - if he’s okay. 

“Probably,” Mr. Stark says after a brief pause. “I mean, I’m a pretty well-known guy, especially in recent weeks -”

_ Recent weeks? _

“- so the cops and press and people in general tend to perk their ears up whenever I do anything, basically. And you’re not that shy of a local celebrity yourself, Mister Spider-man. They’ll check with witnesses, CCTV - whatever. I’m sure someone will pick up that Iron Man and Spider-man were there, though. Will it be an issue, though? Probably not. The cops generally want to do their job in peace, I find - except up to the point where they can’t do their job anymore; that’s when people like me or you get asked to be involved - so I don’t doubt they won’t bother you too much. Especially not if they don’t know who you actually are, which I’m guessing they don’t?”

Peter shakes his head.  _ God _ , no. That’s the exact type of complication that makes him feel that exact type of sick and stressed out he focuses so heavily on not feeling as much as possible.

Mr. Stark shrugs a little, the movement almost imperceptible in the dark. “Then there you have it. You’re locked and loaded to - you know. Go back to doing whatever you do during the day.”

_ This _ , Peter thinks, but he doesn’t say it. He’s pretty sure Mr.  _ Stark’s _ ears would be perked if he found out the guy who he probably assumes to be, like, a fourteen year old kid wasn’t attending a school of some sorts.

“What - what are we gonna do about this stuff?” he ventures instead. “I - I mean, I recognize this stuff, I think - there was an attack-thingy up in Richmond Hill, like, a few days ago which got kind of crazy but I’m  _ sure _ it’s the same guys using the same stuff - they were out by this bank when I found them and - I mean, shouldn’t we, you know,  _ do something _ about it?”

Mr. Stark stares out at the bank for a few more seconds, sniffs, then turns on his heel, marching back over to where he left the suit, front still open. 

“I’ve got it covered, Spider-man,” he says with his back to Peter. 

Peter frowns. “Don’t - I mean, I could  _ help _ , if - if you needed any -”

“I’m good, actually. Thank you for the offer, though.”

“Is - are the  _ Avengers _ gonna deal with this?” Not that it wouldn’t be just as annoying to be effectively kicked off a case that’s happening in his own neighborhood, but, still. Having the Avengers show up in Queens would be  _ beyond _ awesome, even if they were only there to do Peter’s job for him. “Like - Thor? And - Captain America?”

Mr. Stark pauses at the front of the suit. He rests a hand on one of the arms. 

“You know, kid, as garbage as the news normally is, it  _ does _ pay to stay informed. Helps give some context. And, no, the Avengers will, sadly enough, not be making an appearance for this one. I’ll handle what needs to be handled myself.”

“What - what about me? Us?”

Mr. Stark turns halfway and gives him a tense sort of smile. “Don’t jump the gun, kid. You did great, but, like I said, I’ll handle what needs to be handled. There’s a billion other things to handle around Queens. How about you stick to that stuff, alright?”

“But I want to help -”

“Then stay out from underneath my feet,” Mr. Stark says sagely and, if he wasn’t Tony Stark, Peter would half-debate the idea of slapping him. “Trust me, kid, this’ll be over a lot easier if you just leave it to the grown-ups.”

“I am a grown-up!” he protests and immediately mentally throws himself off the side of the building. Great way to convince people he’s a grown-up - whine about how he  _ is _ one while his voice cracks in seven different places. Great idea. Really great.

Mr. Stark gives another  _ hm _ -ing noise. Then turns fully, so he’s facing Peter again like before. “You did good, Spider-man,” he repeats. “I mean it. You have a lot of skills and a lot of potential, and I’m sorry to horn in on your thing here, but - trust me, okay? This’ll all be over and done with a lot faster if you do that.”

Peter can remember the last time an adult told him to trust them. It started out with a late-night hacking session in the Queens public library with his knees pressed against the groove of the table he was at and his hands shaking as he carefully trawled through lists and lists of data and public records. It had ended with him living in a skate park for three weeks. 

But he nods all the same, because it’s the normal thing to do - the Spider-man thing to do. Whatever, really. He’s been doing stuff like this for  _ years _ now, and Mr. Stark hasn’t so much as batted an eye in his direction. He can ‘lay low’ for a few days and then pick back up right where he left off. It’s not like Mr. Stark is going to really notice, or anything.

The man gives him a final, tight smile before climbing into the suit. Peter watches in not a little awe as the suit closes back up, parts shifting into place seamlessly.

Mr. Stark takes off the glasses just before the helmet closes up over his face. 

“The New York Times did a good article on it,” says Mr. Stark, voice back to it’s same tinniness and roboticness as before. The eyes of his suit flash white in the darkness. “Check it out if you have a sec.”

_ It? What’s  _ it?

But Peter just nods again, and the suit nods back. Then the repulsors fire up, a whir cutting through the quiet, washing out the distant hum of cars and talking and buildings slowly collapsing in on itself.

And then Tony Stark is gone.

Peter stands there for a second, panting a little. He reaches up to the top of his head and pulls off the mask, blinking in relief as the cold night air floods over his still flushed-face. It’s dark and quiet enough and he’s far away enough from the bank for unmaking to be safe. He can taste blood on the corner of his lip and there’s a reddish stain at the corresponding location on the mask. 

“What the fuck?” he mutters to the now-empty rooftop. He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes hard enough to see stars pop in his vision. “What the  _ fuck _ just happened?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HELLO....yes i did crib some of the dialogue from homecoming here Yes...i am sometimes unoriginal but canon peter is so funny i cannot help myself...also peter freaking out abt being in the same room as tony gives me Big scott lang and steve vibes skdjskfndkdn....


	4. Chapter 4

“So, when I said _have a look at some things_ , I did not mean t _ake it upon yourself to go running after some random vigilante and get a fucking municipal building sliced in half.”_

Tony is hungover. Very hungover. 

Tony is hungover and the workshop bench his head is resting on is very cold and very nice - speaking of his head, it’s _pounding_ \- and someone who he can only assume to be Pepper standing three feet in front of him, all but screaming in his face is really, really not helping. At all.

“Noted,” he says to floor. It swims in and out of focus. _Fuck_ , his _head_. 

Meanwhile, Pepper Potts is on the warpath. He could vaguely hear her heels clacking up and down on the concrete floor of the workshop as she paces. He can only imagine her face right now, frown cutting through her brow and mouth forming a hard line and eyes screwing up in the way that tells Tony he is probably going to get yelled at for the next six hours and fifteen minutes, minimum. He can imagine her swinging something around in her hands as she talks - a clipboard, maybe, or some press statements, or a newspaper, or some legal bullshit he needs to deal with.

Funny. He can almost remember this exact conversation happening three-ish months ago. Pepper mad. Him too tired to be mad in return. Him having messed up something very substantially, also contributing to his inability to be mad because whatever had been happening was probably his fault. Him probably not as sober as he’d have liked to be. Pepper yelling. Pepper pacing. Pepper telling him she couldn’t do this anymore - _this_ said with a lot of feelings and gestures his eyes was too busy boring into the workshop floor to pick up on. Him yelling a bit too. Pepper yelling some more. Pepper storming out of the workshop Pepper packing. Pepper leaving. Pepper not speaking to him for a month after that. Him not speaking to Pepper for a month after that.

Tony closes his eyes. His head is pounding. His chest is pounding. 

“Look at me,” Pepper says and Tony, feeling like his explanation of why it really, really hurts to do that will probably make the situation eight thousand times worse, does. The pain in his head racks up to a solid fifteen as his squints up at her, narrowing his eyes around the light from one of the desk lamps that, at some point, had been pointed at him by someone. Probably DUM-E. Fucking DUM-E.

“Friday, turn -”

_“Tony -”_

“- the lights to 15%.” Tony finishes and drops his head onto a hand, forcibly keeping it up. Around them, the lights dim. “Thanks.”

Pepper _is_ , in fact, armed with a clipboard. No newspaper, though. That’s good. Newspapers generally signify things have gotten very bad in his absence and someone - _he_ \- is going to have to fix it. Or rather Pepper is going to have to fix it while Tony lies around being hungover and incompetent.

She glares at him, gaze entirely too scrutinizing for this early in the morning - is it early? What’s the time? - and frowns.

“Are you - drunk?” she says after a pause. 

“Nope.” He winces. Hopefully not. 

“Hungover?”

“Yep.”

“It’s nine in the morning, Tony.”

Tony decides not to point out the fact that, generally speaking, mornings are the acceptable time to have hangovers, if there _is_ an acceptable time to have a hangover. She would probably have cause for concern if it was four in the afternoon, but it isn’t. It’s nine in the morning and he’s hungover and tired and his chest feels like someone’s dropped an ATM on it, if he’s sticking in line with last night and keeping things bank-related. It wasn’t an ATM, though. Not unless ATMs can be small and circular and shiny and painted red, white, and blue. 

Nope, no ATM. Just a shield and a lot of ice and a lot of blood. That’s fine. Tony exhales into the table top. This is all totally fine.

In front of him, he hears Pepper suck in a breath, long and shaking in the way that he’s come to recognize means she’s really, really pissed. 

“Tony,” she says, voice just as slow and carefully contained as her breath. “I have the press _literally_ up my ass right now. People are demanding a statement, retribution, some sort of explanation as to what on _earth_ happened last night - _anything,_ really - and _you’re_ here holed up in your workshop drunk off your ass. At nine in the morning, Tony, _nine -”_

“Technically speaking, I’m _hungover_ -”

“For _god’s_ _sake,_ Tony -”

“Okay, okay.” He straightens up, wincing as he feels the blood actively drain from his head. His vision sways a little bit before resettling and, when it does, Pepper’s form comes into view. She’s already dressed for success in a light blue button up and matching blazer and pants. Meanwhile _he_ is, as she pointed out, holed up in his workshop in the same shirt and pants from last night which are definitely torn up, burned in places, and stained with what he really hopes is not _his_ blood. There’s definitely something to apologize for in this, but the words somehow get stuck in the back of his mouth along with the billion other things he needs to apologize to her for, so he just clears his throat and passes a hand over his face. “I’m here.”

Then, “I’m sorry.”

A complete let down of an apology, but seems pretty fitting given basically everything else about him now. 

She sighs. “I thought you quit.”

“Hm?”

“Drinking.” Another sigh. “I thought you were sober.”

“Key word there being _were,_ Miss Potts,” Tony mutters, shifting a little on the bench so he’s primed to hop off it and go about cleaning himself up and doing the things he has to do to contain the disaster at the bank last night. The idea of moving seems supremely unappealing right now, though, and part of Tony wonders how bad it would be if he just stayed where he was for the next six to twelve business days. “Don’t worry about it, though. Just a little nightcap.”

She scoffs a little, setting the clipboard down and pushing it over towards him. “Never known you to do things by halves.”

“Got me there, Miss Potts.” Tony doesn’t stand - that particular adventure will probably end up with him lying on the floor in a heap - but he does reach across the table and pull the clipboard Pepper’s set down towards him. It’s the typical stuff for things like this - a few drafted statements, press releases and some exoneration documents. “I’ll sign this stuff. Just - ixnay on the press conference for the time being? It’d - well, I think it’d be a bad way to make my triumphant return back into the public sphere, that’s all.”

Pepper’s mouth twitches as she settles down in the seat opposite him. “You can’t just brush this under the rug, Tony. Especially not after everything that went down with those Accords - people are demanding accountability now more than ever -”

Tony blinks and suddenly he’s in the back hallway behind the lecture theater, unable to speak or move or even breathe as Miriam Sharpe presses a photo of a boy who he doesn’t even know who died at the Avengers’ hands - at Tony’s hands. Then he blinks again and the room around him falls back into place.

“- and we really can’t just leave this unaddressed. _You_ can’t leave this unaddressed. A bank was cut in half; people are going to have questions. They have questions, and that _Spider-man_ person you somehow dragged into this -”

“That _I_ dragged into this?” Tony echoes, fighting the urge to snap the pen in his hand in half. Instead, he just sets it on the table a little harder than necessary and pushes the papers, now all signed and dated, back to Pepper. “I’m sorry, but I _saved his ass_ out there. He was going in all guns blazing up against these hacks with fancy guns and they were going to wipe his face with an ATM machine. I was _helping_. There’s damage done? Fine! Send the bills my way. People want an explanation? I don’t have one, but if they’re really that desperate, then alright. Give me a day; I’ll give ‘em something to chew on. People want someone to blame?” He spread his hands out, pointing at his chest, and tries not to think about the ugly mass of purple and yellow bruises that coat his chest, spreading from his sternum outwards. “Slap my name on it and call it a day.”

“Tony -”

“I can’t control this shit, okay, Pepper? I told the _Spider-man_ to let me handle this and I will. Just - I need time, Pepper, okay? I can do all of this in a sec, I just - and don’t you have a company to run, anyways?” Tony says, frowning suddenly. What day is it, again? Nope, doesn’t matter. Pepper would be in the office by nine on any day, bar someone’s birthday, major holidays, or the end of the world. “What are you doing here?”

_Why did you come back in the first place?_

Pepper sighs, long and loud. She pulls the papers he’s signed over towards her, carefully straightening the stack out and setting the pen down in the center of it. Her eyes stay on her hands the whole time. 

“You were friends with Steve -”

Something cold and hot at the same time fills Tony’s entire body, making his vision buzz a little at the edges. Suddenly he’s in Siberia all over again and Steve is looming over him, blood on his cheek and shield raised like some sort of demonic surgeon’s scalpel. Then his face is pressed into the stone and his suit is pinning him to the ground and he can feel every breath whistling around the cracked and broken make-up of the ribs in his chest. Then he’s in the bank and the Captain America mask is staring back at him from the gloom, plastic lips upturned in a smile that reads so mocking to Tony that it takes all of his self-control to not raise a hand and blow the guy’s head off. Then he’s slammed back into his body, back into the workshop with Pepper’s face looking torn somewhere between annoyed and stressed out, back with his half-broken sternum and hangover headache and the Spider-man’s hopeful question of _what are we gonna do about this stuff?_ floating around his head. 

Tony raises up a hand to cut her off. “I don’t want to talk about Steve -”

“And I would love to have my day off without - any of this,” she cuts back in, voice just as sharp as his. “But sometimes we have to compromise.”

He drops his hand, letting it _thunk_ against the table. She‘s back here on her day off, cleaning up his messes like it’s still 2008 and he’s still a grade-a piece of shit. 

Suddenly, he’s exhausted.

“You were friends with Steve,” she repeats, voice slow again, almost verging on gentle. “And, I mean, I only had a sideline perspective, but the mess with the Accords was - well, it was a _mess_ , basically. The tapes from the airport battle -”

“You watched those?”

“They’re all over YouTube, Tony; half the _world_ has seen them now. But yes, I did. And they looked bad. And, sure, sometimes you _do_ have your moments as a good liar, but I’m not an idiot, Tony. I know something’s up. I know something happened.”

“Yeah, Steve went all _Cap-knows-best_ on my ass and broke up the team. I got a car dropped on me. Rhodey’s paralyzed now. Ross is - I don’t know, in surgery because his head got stuck up his own ass. That’s what happened.”

Because the less people that know about Siberia, the better. He went through the public aspect of the world mourning the death of his parents already - and he barely got through it that time. He can’t stomach another pitied look, another almost-imperceptible inhale and the utterances of _I’m so sorry_ or _I had no idea_ or _did it hurt? Do you miss them? Do you wish it was you?_ said in that fascinated tone that makes Tony want to throw someone’s head through a wall.

And, sure, Pepper is blessed with an almost unheard of amount of tact, and he knows her well enough by now - and, more to the point, really, she knows him - to not do all the things people would do if they found out James Buchanan Barnes, the infamous Winter Soldier, murdered his parents, but he just can’t say it. He doesn't want to say it, so he’s not going to. 

“There’s more to it than that, Tony. Your chest -”

“I swear to _god_ I’m going to send Helen a strongly worded email for showing you that shit. I wasn’t kidding about the whole client confidentiality thing, you know -”

“- looks like someone had at it with a battering ram and I can probably count the hours of sleep you’ve gotten in the past week on one hand and you - _really_ don’t function well when you’re left to your own devices after things like this - clearly; see the point about you getting about, what, ten hours of sleep in the past week, maybe? - and I just -”

She sighs again, a little sharper this time. Her hands clench and unclench on top of the papers. 

“- I don’t want you doing something stupid. That’s all.”

“I’m not a child,” he points out, irritation crawling up the back of his throat even if what Pepper’s saying is true, even if he probably does need to be put under some sort of watch, even if he’s just glad she’s here, even if it’s for no other reason than she thinks she has to. “I can look after myself.”

“Oh, is _that_ what you call getting drunk off your ass? Taking _care_ of yourself?”

“God, cut me a fucking break, why don’t you?”

“This isn’t _healthy_ , Tony -”

 _“I’ll_ be the judge of that, thanks -”

“- and, thinking about it, I really shouldn’t have brought up that stupid _Spider-man_ _thing_ in the first place; you need to rest for the next, _god_ , six and a half months, not go running around Queens and trying to stop getting banks cut in half -”

“It’s my _job_ , Pepper. I’m _Iron Man.”_

“Your _job_ is to take care of yourself, Tony -”

“My _job,”_ he snaps out, pounding a hand on the table before he can stop himself. Pepper flinches back, mouth snapping shut and, god, she’s been here for less than a day and they’re already fighting and Tony already wants to fucking cry and he’s already managing to mess things up more and more by the second. 

He keeps talking, though, because the silence is too loud and too heavy and his head is pounding with each heartbeat his body produces and, if he talks enough, maybe the thing inside his chest that’s opened up since the airport and Zemo’s video and Siberia and the flight home will close up and he can finally go to sleep without feeling like he’s going to cave in on himself. 

“My _job,”_ he repeats, forcing his voice down to a conversational tone. “Is to keep the peace. My _job_ is to get Rhodey back on his feet. My _job_ is to make sure Ross doesn’t try to arrest anyone else. My _job_ is to perform the necessary duties as Iron Man and, yeah, sometimes that means stopping random kids in hoodies and sweatpants from getting snapped in half by an ATM. My job is to keep people safe, Pepper. And there’s some people running around with stuff they definitely shouldn’t have and, sure, bank robberies are for the NYPD - I know that - but when you factor in - alien tech and a guy who definitely can’t be over 20 trying to stop it all - the NYPD won’t cut it. And that’s not to mention the fact that the Avengers are, as of lately, fucking toast, so it’s really just - my job is just to hold the fort down for the time being. Whatever that entails.”

“What about you?”

He blinks at the unexpected softness her tone’s taken on. “What about me?”

“You’re not a machine, Tony -”

“Never said I was, actually -”

“You’re acting like it,” Pepper says flatly. “I’ve seen you when it’s bad - after New York, after Ultron, all of it - and nothing compares to - _this_ . What good are you going to be to the world if you run yourself into the ground? What good are you going to be to _anyone_ if you - I don’t know, keel over in the middle of a fight and get your head cut in half by those guys?” 

“Yeah, well.” Tony huffs a laugh that sticks to the back of his total a little more than he’d have liked it to. “You can’t say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Don’t.” Suddenly she’s standing, closing the distance between them to hover above him, his knees brushing against her legs. “Don’t you _dare_ say shit like that, Tony Stark. Understand?”

Something inside her gaze looks like it’s cracking in half, and it doesn't take a genius to figure out that it’s because of him. Something inside Tony wrenches a little. “I was kidding, Pepper.”

“No, you weren’t.”

 _No, I wasn’t_ , Tony silently agrees, pressing his fingers into the corners of his eyes and trying to make the next exhale he gives come out as steady as possible. “Listen, Pep - Pepper. This - I’m - things are kind of crazy right now, obviously. I - I want to - god.”

He flinches as her hand brushes against the back of his, carefully pulling it away from his face. The side of his nose burns a little, and he realized he’d been digging his nails into his face. 

“I want to do this right, okay?” he mutters. “This - talking. Us reconciling, or whatever - not that - I mean, things are - look, okay. I’m a mess right now. Things are a mess. I don’t want you to feel like you - you should be sticking around because of that or - you know? I don’t want this to be post-New York: the sequel. I don’t - I don’t think you necessarily deserve to put up with all that again. Just - just saying. You can - I don’t know -”

“Go?”

It takes Tony a second to realize Pepper hasn’t pulled her hand back. It’s still pressing against his a little. Her voice is sad.

“If you want,” he says carefully. “I wouldn’t hold it against you, that’s all.”

“I _want_ to help you, Tony,” she replies, voice just as careful. “I don’t like seeing you like this.”

“It’s fine -”

“It’s not.” Her hand presses against his a fraction harder. “It doesn't have to be.”

Tony snorts a little at that. “Kinda does, Pepper.”

“The world is not your responsibility, Tony.”

“I’ve almost destroyed it, like, six times, though. Figure there has to be some give and take with us, right?”

Pepper sighs again and drops her hand until it rests on his elbow. Carefully, she pulls him to his feet and raises her hand back up to press against the side of his face. Her thumb slots into the space underneath his jaw and her fingers curl around his hairline and Tony never, ever wants to move from this position. He wants to stay here - wants her to stay here - until the sun explodes. 

He wants her to want to stay here. Even if their taking a break didn’t happen on ugly terms - she came back a few hours after that fight they; after, they had sat down at the breakfast bar and talked it out for a good few hours before she left again - he’s still missed her. Missed her so much it’s hurt, the ache on par with his cracked sternum. The compound has felt too big and too empty without her, like her leaving stretched out the very matter of the earth around him, making the distances between him and everything else feel suddenly much vaster and more impenetrable.

Sure, he’s functioned, whatever. He’d managed to keep the Avengers under good fortune up until Lagos. He’d kept the parts of the company he was still responsible for in fine condition. He’d done everything he needed to do in her absence, and done it well. But the line between living and just functioning- to run the risk of sounding like the world’s biggest sap - had become a lot clearer since they had split, and Tony had found himself spending an overwhelming amount of time in the latter. 

“What happened in Sokovia was not all on you,” Pepper says, voice cutting through his thoughts. “What happened in New York was not because of you. What happened with Steve and the Avengers, what happened in Lagos and Berlin - that was not because of you, okay?”

He focuses on the feeling of her fingers in his hair and and the brush of her elbows against his forearms and the smell of printer ink and apple and jasmine-scented hand soap that constantly radiates around her rather than answering. 

_“Okay?”_ she presses.

“Okay,” he mutters.

“I’m sorry for yelling,” she says without blinking. “That wasn’t okay of me. You did a really good job out there last night and I know you didn’t involve the Spider-man anymore than he already was. I’m sorry for saying that you did. I was just -” She swallows imperceptibly. “- worried, and I freaked out.”

Tony ducks his head for a second. In all his years of knowing her, she’s always been good at this. Apologizing; knowing when she fucked up and how to start making amends. He’d have thought that, after some point, tose traits would’ve rubbed off on him a bit, but here he is, unable to return the apology like a normal person would, unable to do anything but sit there and blink at her.

She doesn’t drop her hand. Her gaze stays on him, lasering right through the center of his forehead, and Tony half-wonders if she can see everything inside of him, read every thought and feeling and firing neuron he has like it’s the morning paper. He wonders if he can see into the tiny locked box that’s starting to form, his new dumping ground for all things Siberia and Steve related. He wonders if she can see what happened, see the CCTV footage that hadn’t stopped playing in his mind since the second he first watched it, see Barnes’s hand closing around his mother’s neck and Howard bleeding out on the dusty ground and the emotionless glint in the supersoldier’s eyes as he shot the camera to pieces.

He wonders if she can see Steve kneeling on his chest, shield raised, eyes blank. He hopes she can’t. He wishes _he_ had never seen that in the first place.

“What are you going to do?” Tony says into the silence. His skin is starting to crawl under her gaze a little. 

She stares at him in silence for a second longer, her gaze totally unreadable. Then smiles a little, and something inside Tony uncoils a little.

“Stay,” she says like it’s the simplest thing in the world. Maybe it is. 

“Okay,” he says, and the thing inside him uncurls a little more. He forces his thoughts away from Siberia and Steve and Barnes and his mother and the yellow-tinted footage and the road and Zemo and the bank and the glowing purple weapons and Spider-man and his nameless identity and the painful optimism and hope Tony could feel exuding from the kid’s very core. He drags his attention back to earth, back to the workshop, back to Pepper, and tries to smile a little. “Okay.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> woohoo.....thank you for reading....

**Author's Note:**

> hello! starting a new fic because Um why not! idk how often i will update this! please let me know all of your preferences on this!
> 
> also check out my tumblr! @tnyystark


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